The Internet has become a pervasive element of society. A rapidly growing portion of the population now has access to the Internet (which most people access via “web pages” found on the World Wide Web, or the “web”). With the increasing use of DSL, satellite and Cable Modems, the now ubiquitous 56.5 Kbps dial-up modems, and the advent of the 802.11(a), (b), and (g) standards, commonly known as “wi-fi,” Internet connectivity among computer users is now the norm. The speed of data send and receive rates is such that rapid text, audio and video communications is now possible. The availability of such speed and connectivity has ushered in an era where the Internet is used in the vast majority of businesses and homes. Popular communications applications supported by the Internet and available on the web are chat rooms and instant messaging. Chat rooms can be provided by Internet Service Providers (ISPs) such as, for example, AOL/Time Warner or The Microsoft Network, or individual websites. A chat room is essentially an electronic bulletin board where “posts” or messages (e.g., a few lines of text containing a thought or two) are readable to anyone in the chat room in essentially real time. Thus, in a chat room, participants interested in a particular topic (often reflected in the name of the chat room) can electronically “chat” with other chat participants by sending and receiving text messages. In many instances, participants in chat rooms use anonymous screen names which often do not reflect their true identities, ages or level of maturity.
As result of this inherent anonymity, chat rooms can be misused for inappropriate discussions. For example, a child may obtain access to a chat room (e.g., by using a screen name not indicative of the child's age) and seek to either engage in or be approached to engage in “chats” directed to inappropriate subjects, such as sex or drugs. Further, children may access certain chat rooms and, based on chats conducted therein, be lured to take some action outside of the chat room, such as meeting a particular individual. Since such a circumstance may present a significant danger to the child, his or her activity as a chat participant also involves a certain degree of risk and danger.
To address these risks, systems for monitoring the on-line behavior of chat participants have been developed. Nonetheless, these conventional systems have limited abilities, if any, to dynamically interact with chat participants and proactively identify potentially dangerous situations and provide reports of problematic behavior. Some conventional systems, such as, for example, Net Nanny, CYBERsitter, Child Safe and others, scan for occurrences of a list of keywords hopefully indicative of malicious intentions. However this approach has a very limited effectiveness inasmuch as people often shrewdly avoid obvious “bad” keywords. Such conventional systems focus on identifying particular keywords and cannot discern patterns in a conversation that could indicate inappropriate behavior where the use of a particular keyword is absent. In addition, an approach that merely logs the text of chats cannot provide any real-time interaction with a chat participant (for example, either a suspected predator or his victim) or provide for any automatic real-time notification of a designated party (for example a parent or proper authorities). Further, any actions taken based upon a delayed analysis of a chat log can often be too late.
What is desirable in the art is to have a system and/or method for monitoring the actions of particular chat room participants, such as children, to protect them from inappropriate interactions in a chat room. It is further desirable to have a system and/or method that can, once recognizing inappropriate interactions, provide (automatically) a warning to a chat participant and/or to a designated third party, such as a parent, guardian or administrator of the chat room.